Pyramids

It is astonishingly difficult to walk with legs full of straw when the brain doing the directing is in a pot ten feet away, but he made it as far as the wall and felt his way along it until a crash indicated that he’d reached the shelf of jars. He fumbled the lids of the first one and dipped his hand gently inside.

It must be brains, he thought manically, because semolina doesn’t squidge like that. I’ve collected my own thoughts, haha.

He tried one or two more jars until an explosion of daylight told him he’d found the one with his eyes in. He watched his own bandaged hand reach down, growing gigantic, and scoop them up carefully.

That seems to be the important bits, he thought. The rest can wait until later. Maybe when I need to eat something, and so forth.

He turned around, and realized that he was not alone. Dil and Gern were watching him. To squeeze any further into the far corner of the room, they would have needed triangular backbones.

‘Ah. Ho there, good people,’ said the king, aware that his voice was a little hollow. ‘I know so much about you, I’d like to shake you by the hand.’ He looked down. ‘Only they’re rather full at the moment,’ he added.

‘Gkkk,’ said Gern.

‘You couldn’t do a bit of reassembly, could you?’ said the king, turning to Dil. ‘Your stitches seem to be holding up nicely, by the way. Well done, that man.’

Professional pride broke through the barrier of Dil’s terror.

‘You’re alive?’ he said.

‘That was the general idea, wasn’t it?’ said the king.

Dil nodded. Certainly it was. He’d always believed it to be true. He’d just never expected it ever actually to happen. But it had, and the first words, well, nearly the first words that had been said were in praise of his needlework. His chest swelled. No one else in the Guild had ever been congratulated on their work by a recipient.

‘There,’ he said to Gern, whose shoulderblades were making a spirited attempt to dig their way through the wall. ‘Hear what has been said to your master.’

The king paused. It was beginning to dawn on him that things weren’t quite right here. Of course the Netherworld was like this world, only better, and no doubt there were plenty of servants and so forth. But it seemed altogether far too much like this world. He was pretty sure that Dil and Gern shouldn’t be in it yet. Anyway, he’d always understood that the common people had their own Netherworld, where they would be more at ease and could mingle with their own kind and wouldn’t feel awkward and socially out of place.

‘I say,’ he said. ‘I may have missed a bit here. You’re not dead, are you?’

Dil didn’t answer immediately. Some of the things he’d seen so far today had made him a bit uncertain on the subject. In the end, though, he was forced to admit that he probably was alive.

‘Then what’s happening?’ said the king.

‘We don’t know, O king,’ said Dil. ‘Really we don’t. It’s all come true, O fount of waters!’

‘What has?’

‘Everything!’

‘Everything?’

‘The sun, O lord. And the gods! Oh, the gods! They’re everywhere, O master of heaven!’

‘We came in through the back way,’ said Gern, who had dropped to his knees. ‘Forgive us, O lord of justice, who has come back to deliver his mighty wisdom and that. I am sorry about me and Glwenda, it was a moment of wossname, mad passion, we couldn’t control ourselves. Also, it was me—’

Dil waved him into a devout silence.

‘Excuse me,’ he said to the king’s mummy. ‘But could we have a word away from the lad? Man to—’

‘Corpse?’ said the king, trying to make it easy for him. ‘Certainly.’

They wandered over to the other side of the room.

‘The fact is, O gracious king of—’ Dil began, in a conspiratorial whisper.

‘I think we can dispense with all that,’ said the king briskly. ‘The dead don’t stand on ceremony. “King” will be quite sufficient.’

‘The fact is, then — king,’ said Dil, experiencing a slight thrill at this equitable treatment, ‘young Gern thinks it’s all his fault. I’ve told him over and over again that the gods wouldn’t go to all this trouble just because of one growing lad with urges, if you catch my drift.’ He paused, and added carefully, ‘They wouldn’t, would they?’

‘Shouldn’t think so for one minute,’ said the king briskly. ‘We’d never see the back of them, otherwise.’

‘That’s what I told him,’ said Dil, immensely relieved. ‘He’s a good boy, sir, it’s just that his mum is a bit funny about religion. We’d never see the back of them, those were my very words. I’d be very grateful if you could have a word with him, sir, you know, set his mind at rest—’

‘Be happy to,’ said the king graciously.

Dil sidled closer.

‘The fact is, sir, these gods, sir, they aren’t right. We’ve been watching, sir. At least, I have. I climbed on the roof. Gern didn’t, he hid under the bench. They’re not right, sir!’

‘What’s wrong with them?’